Long road back worth the wait for Gibson

After almost 700 days, Maisy Gibson made her long-awaited return to elite cricket last weekend, overcoming a third knee reconstruction to take her place in Tasmania's XI.

Fan favourite Gibson was a notable absentee from consecutive Weber WBBL seasons, missing both the |06 and |07 editions after rupturing her ACL while batting during a preseason game in September last year.

Describing her return to play as something of a "shock to the system" ahead of last weekend's double-header against Queensland, the keg-spinner bowled 12 overs across the two games, claiming the key wicket of Fire young gun Georgia Voll.

The careful return to play was essential, given Gibson's history; she tore her left ACL twice in the same year when she was 16 years old, and this time, aged 24, it was her right knee she injured.

"I wanted to be back playing (as quickly as possible), but it's also about the longevity of my career," Gibson told cricket.com.au.

"Because if I'm have another knee injury like that, that's probably potentially the end of my career … I'd give it a red-hot crack to get back, but mentally, thinking about it right now, I just don't think I could go through that again.

"I've done that three times. So that's been three years of rehab, essentially."

Gibson spent much of the winter in the United Kingdom visiting her partner, who is involved in the Northern Diamonds program, and continued her rehabilitation while she was overseas.

"I really appreciated the trust that (Tasmania coach) Salliann (Beams) and everyone had in me to do my rehab there and do it properly," she said.

"What probably helped my case was that I had done all the rehab before, so it wasn't so foreign, and I got some good support from the Northern Diamonds, with their physio and their (conditioning coach) and Danni Hazel, who's their head coach, which was quite good."

Gibson had also missed the entire 2020-21 Women's National Cricket League season, and while she returned from the UK hopeful of making a return for the Hobart Hurricanes in WBBL|07, she was not passed fully fit until earlier this month.

"I felt like I could have got through a game but it probably wouldn't have been at the standard that we needed or the standard that we would have wanted," she explained.

"It was also the risk versus reward … it would have been great if I got through but also (the potential that) I didn't and how bad that outcome could have been.

"But I stayed around the Hurricanes group (as they travelled around Australia), which was really good and I was kind of a net batter and I could still train, which was really nice, because I did my hardest parts of my rehab last season while the girls were away at the Big Bash hub (in Sydney)."

Tasmania are next scheduled to host Western Australia on January 7 and 9, but those matches are in doubt after WA enforced a hard border on the island state earlier this week.

Should they be postponed, the Tigers will next be in action in mid-February for a run of at least four matches in a fortnight.

"We'll play a lot more consistently (in February), which will be really nice, and that's not something we really experience too much with WNCL," Gibson said.

"It's always having a couple of games, then a break, then another couple of games, before a break."